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In Class or at a Tournament, a Cross-Ruff Requires Timing

Those who attend bridge lessons have been known to observe, “I never get deals like this in real life.”

This is not true, of course, but at the table the themes are not so readily apparent as they are in a class situation.

To show that textbook deals do occur in tournaments, here is one from the John Roberts Teams at the Cavendish Invitational in Henderson, Nev., this month. Look at only the North and South hands. You are South, the declarer in four spades. West leads the diamond ace, cashes the heart ace and continues with a second diamond. You take the trick with dummy’s king and call for a trump. East wins with his ace and leads the diamond queen. After you ruff high, West discards a heart. Needing the rest of the tricks, how would you continue from there?

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Notice the modern expert tendency not to care about four cards in another major when making a weak two-bid. Just pre-empt and hope to cause the opponents more grief than your side. After West overcalled three hearts, and North jumped to four spades, East’s double said just that he had too many points to pass but no better call available. West, with nowhere to go, passed.

The declarer, Steve Weinstein, set out to establish a long club in the dummy. That required ruffing three clubs in his hand. So he needed four dummy entries: three for the ruffs and one to get back to the dummy to cash the established club. Those had to be the club ace and three spades. Immediately drawing the missing trump or ruffing a heart would cost a vital entry.

South played a club to the ace, trumped a club in his hand, played a spade to dummy’s jack, ruffed another club, trumped a heart, ruffed a club, trumped a heart and cashed the club jack for a heart discard. Weinstein took five spades, one diamond, two clubs and two heart ruffs in the dummy.

It looks as if just trumping the three heart losers in the dummy would work too, but one declarer mistimed the play. After ruffing the diamond queen, if South had immediately played a club to the ace and ruffed a club, he would have been all right. But he ruffed a heart first. Then, after club ace, club ruff, heart ruff, club ruff, heart ruff, this was the position with North on lead:

South could not stop West’s spade nine from scoring the setting trick.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C6 of the New York edition with the headline: In Class or at a Tournament, A Cross-Ruff Requires Timing. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe